Video

"Ask Interior" pilot episode

November 15, 2010

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Transcript

Hey everyone, my name’s Tim Fullerton and
I’m the director of New Media here at the U.S. Department of the Interior
and we’re working on a new on-line video project
that we’d like your input on.
It’s called “Ask Interior,”
where every month we pick a topic that the department is working on
and we ask you,the general public, to submit your questions
and we’ll do our best to answer as many of them as possible.
What you’re about to see over the next minute or two is our pilot.
This is a rough cut of one that we’re working on that talks about our solar projects
that we’ve been announcing over the last few months.
So take a look, let us know what you think,
whether it’s positive or negative, we’ll take all feedback.
And if you like it, please send us in more questions
about work we’re doing and we’ll do our best
over the next few months to answer as many of them as possible.
Thanks and we hope you enjoy.
[music]
Hi, I’m Camilla from Denver, and I’d like to ask Interior
Why are they so involved in solar energy?
Solar projects require a big footprint
in order to generate the amount of electricity that’s needed
in order to make these financially feasible.
So when you look at who manages most of the lands
in the desert southwest,
it’s the Bureau of Land Management.
Now we have about 23 million acres of land
that we deemed appropriate or at least
suitable for solar energy.
Because we have the land, we have the sun.
When you put the two together it makes a match.
We determine whether or not those sites are appropriate
for commercial scale development.
If we determine that they are appropriate,
then we’ll go through the analysis to see
how best we can mitigate the impacts from
these large scale solar projects.
At the same time, we also know
that in order to make these projects feasible,
you have to be close to transmission lines
and we have transmission lines across the public lands.
So again, when you have sun,
when you have land, when you have transmission,
you have all the factors to have a successful project.
Solar energy is going to become
part of our Nation’s energy portfolio
and the Bureau of Land Management
is going to play an important role in ensuring that.
[music]